A Brother Remembers
by Jaquelyne
Summary: Ron remembers how he came to accept that his best mate and little sister fell in love. (Companion piece to the South Tower) Written for the SIYE End of Term Challenge


A Brother Remembers

_A/N:  I personally blame KC for this plot bunny.  It's always the damn reporter that peaks my interest when it needs to be.  When I wrote The South Tower, it was a basic little PWP.  Then I get a review from KC that asked what Ron's opinion was of the whole thing.  _

A redheaded young man sat on the Hogwarts Express with the journal that his fiancé had given him the year before perched on his free knee.  He wanted to get a few stray thoughts down on paper before he forgot them.

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_Here I sit on the train ride home from my final year of Hogwarts.  Hermione is curled at my side, with her head on my shoulder and my best friend and little sister sit across from us, lost in their apparent love for one another.  _

_It doesn't bother me in the least that Ginny and Harry fell in love.   I encouraged the relationship from the start back in our sixth year, if I wanted to be completely honest.  _

_Harry and I were sitting in the Quidditch changing rooms after practice before the Gryffindor versus Slytherin game and I had revealed that Hermione and me were going to Hogsmeade on a date to him.  Hermione is the one that told me to tell him.  She was going to tell Ginny about it as well.  They were our best friends and deserved to hear it from us than the Hogwarts grapevine.  _

_Yes, I know, you should never consider your sibling to be your best friend unless said sibling is a twin, like Fred and George.  But in the days before Hogwarts, Ginny was my best friend.  We played games together in the free time Mum afforded us after our daily lessons.  It had to do with the fact we are less than eleven months apart in age more than anything.  We would join together in getting the twins back, stealing Percy's books and eavesdropping on Bill and Charlie when they were home from Hogwarts.  Then I turned eleven.  _

_I quickly forgot my best friend because now I had Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.  The three of us went on fantastical adventures that first year.  We three learned about ourselves and more about each other.  As I sit here looking back, it was fate that we became friends, because through it, I found my true love and my first best friend ever, found hers.  _

_Back to my sixth year, something changed between the four of us.  We started to pair off once we were together again.  I needed Hermione to help me deal with the thoughts that swirled in my brain after the brain attack at the Ministry.  Harry needed Ginny to help him deal with loss and understanding everything that had happened.  As a group we were very strong, but separate we found what was missing inside of us.  _

_Harry came to the Burrow depressed and withdrawn.  He wouldn't open up to anyone, so Ginny took it upon herself to pull him out of the funk he was in.  They had some great rows that summer and I noticed a change in my best mate.  Well, more how he looked at my little sister.  He would watch her as she swooped around the back paddock on her broom.  He didn't know that anyone saw his surreptitious glances across the kitchen table or over the chessboard, but I did.  I also would catch Ginny silently taking care of Harry when no one paid attention.  She would make sure that he ate, slept and had some fun after the hellish year we had endured.  _

_Now most people that know me, discern that I am charged with protecting Ginny during the school year.  But who defends me from Ginny?  Well, Hermione will upon occasion, and Harry makes sure she doesn't kill me when I have pushed too far again, but really, my little sister has learned every dirty trick in the book from every one of her brothers.  The Bat Bogey hex?  Created by Ginny and Bill when she was only nine years old.  She has a better grasp on magic than even Fred and George do, and that's saying something.  Charlie calls her Snapdragon because her bite is deadly.  The twins said it best; size is no guarantee of power, especially when it comes to Gin.  _

_The last two years of school, she began to surpass most of the DA in power.  She would knock down opponent after opponent in the mock duels we had.  It got to the point that only one person would be able to beat her and that was Harry.  Professor Dumbledore had come to a meeting near the end of sixth year and watched them combat with one another.  Even he was surprised at Ginny's drive in defence, but the four of us knew what drove her.  The memory of Tom Riddle is what made her become such a master of her chosen field.  She once told me in a rare heart to heart, that no matter what, she would be standing behind Harry in the final battle.  Little Ginny Weasley would be Harry Potter's second in the fight.  And you know something, she was and my sister was Brilliant! _

_So, does it bother me that my best mate and my little sister are going to be married in the near future?  No, it doesn't.  The way I look at it, he may be the only one that can control her.  Then again, she is probably the only one that can control him. _

_Control is what leads me to the woman curled in my arms.  I spent two years of my life wishing and hoping that Hermione Jane Granger would maybe one day love me.  It started when I first noticed that she was a girl.  Now, don't believe that I am so thick that I didn't notice that she was, but she was my best mate.  Then she was asked by bloody Vicky Krum to the Yule Ball our fourth year.  To me at the time, it was an act of betrayal. Our other best friend was competing against him!  Our argument over the ball was legendary in the Tower.  You would think that I had a clue at that point, or maybe over the jealousy I showed when they kept writing through our fifth year.  No, it took her getting cursed by Dolohov at the Department of Mysteries for me to realise that I couldn't be without her anymore.  I didn't do anything about it until that summer when she came to the Burrow.     _

_We had started talking about the in suing fight back the ministry.  I revealed to her, albeit unknowingly, my fears at losing her.  I tried to tell her that from now on that she could no longer follow Harry and I in to battle, but Hermione don't like to be told to do anything.  We fought, like we always do, about it.  That fight ended with her telling me that she didn't want me to protect her, only love her.  From that day forward, we have been together.  I do love this woman; with every fibre of my being I love her.  _

_Harry and I bought the engagement rings on the same day in Hogsmeade.  We knew the girls were planning on spending a little time that morning together, so we decided to go ring shopping.  He and I had spent long hours over the chessboard discussing the want to marry our girlfriends.  We sent off letters to their fathers asking for permission.  Mum and Dad gave their blessing to Harry first, lucky git.  They knew that Ginny and he would marry one day.  The Grangers and I traded letters back and forth for close to a month discussing the one girl that meant so much to both of us.  They finally gave this tall gangly wizard their blessing of asking their beautiful, intelligent, sexy and most wonderful daughter to marry him.  _

_I am not the most romantic bloke at Hogwarts or even England.  I asked her to marry me right before the Gates of Hogwarts were blown apart when the Death Eaters and Voldemort came for the final battle.  I just wanted her to know that no matter what, I loved her and wanted to marry her when this was all over.  Thank Merlin, she said yes.  The Dementors never stood a chance against me that day.  I had the greatest memory to fuel my patronus.  _

_I look forward to the future.  There is no Voldemort.  I decided I had spent the last seven years battling death eaters and dark lords to last a lifetime and no use in me being an Auror.  My plans include making sure that Hermione doesn't study to hard in her Healer training and I am going to wizarding law school.  Eventually she and I will buy a nice house somewhere and start a family.  I hope that we have a couple of children that I can teach how to play Quidditch.  Maybe one of them will have Gryffindor house singing 'Weasley is our King (or Queen)' to them.  Who knows!_

_This missive is the words of Ronald Bilius Weasley, one day to be esquire._

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"Ron, what are you writing?" Harry asked from across the train compartment. 

Ron looked up at his best mate. "Oh, nothing.  Just some thoughts I had about the end of the school year." 

Harry chuckled softly so not to wake the girls.  "Anything important?" 

"To me it is.  It's mostly how I felt about the four of our relationships and us as friends," He replied scratching his nose with the end of the eagle feather quill.   "We survived Harry and Hermione and Ginny made sure that we did."

Harry looked down at the red head in his arms.  "Yeah, they did, didn't they?  I couldn't have survived without her." He finished softly. 

Ron tightened his arms around Hermione's waist.  "I don't believe that I would've either without Hermione.  They're pretty special."

"That they are." Harry played with a lock of Gin's hair. 

The two boys that met on a train seven years before now sat together with the loves of their life as men.  The road had been long and hard.  They had been on adventures that they would wish on no one.  The pair of them both was lost in their thoughts as the train rambled through the Scottish landscape.  Little did either of them know, that they heard were both remembering same ghosts from the past.

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_"Anyone sitting here?" The youngest red headed boy asked, pointing to the seat opposite of Harry. "Everywhere else is full." _

_Harry shook his head and the boy sat down.  He glanced at Harry and then looked quickly out of the window, pretending he hadn't looked.  Harry saw he still had a black mark on his nose.  _

_"Hey Ron." _

_The twins were back.  _

_"Listen we're going to the middle of the train – Lee Jordan's got a giant tarantula down there." _

_"Right," mumbled Ron.  _

_"Harry," said the other twin, "did we introduce ourselves? Fred and George Weasley.  And this is Ron, our brother.  See you later then."  _

_"Bye," said Harry and Ron.  _

_"Are you really Harry Potter?"  Ron blurted out. _

_Harry nodded.  _

_"Oh – I thought that might be one of Fred and George's jokes," said Ron.  "And have you really got – you know…"_

_He pointed at Harry's forehead. _

_Harry pulled back his fringe to show the lightning bolt scar.   Ron stared.  _

_"So that's where You-Know-Who -?" _

_"Yes," said Harry, "but I can't remember it." _

_"Nothing?" said Ron eagerly. _

_"Well – I remember a lot of green light, but nothing else."  _

_"Wow," said Ron. _

_--- _

A smile crossed both of their faces remembering their first meeting.  They were no longer the youngest Weasley male who wanted to break out of the shadow of five older brothers and a boy who only wanted to be loved.  Now, they were two men who had stood at the gates of Hell together and survived. 

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A/N2: The portions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were taken from pg 74 (UK version – Soft back)


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